How Can Enterprise Change Fatigue Be Reduced?

A Gartner survey revealed that employees’ willingness to support change within enterprises dropped to 43 percent in 2022 from 74 percent in 2016. At the same time Gartner found that, in part driven by the pandemic, the average employee experienced ten planned enterprise changes — such as a restructure to achieve efficiencies, a culture transformation to unlock new ways of working or the replacement of a legacy tech system — in 2022, up from two in 2016. “Fatigue hurts an employee’s performance in many ways, including apathy, burnout and frustration,” said Daniel Sanchez-Reina, VP analyst, Gartner. Gartner’s four recommendations for CIOs on reducing change fatigue include:

• Treat Change Fatigue as a Business Issue: Change fatigue should be factored into planning initiatives and discussed with business partners, including the level of effort each initiative requires and how it aligns with day-to-day commitments.
• Distribute Change Leadership: With overseers and tactical decision-makers dispersed across the organization, closer worker contacts can enable an organization to change directions when fatigue rises.
• Co-Create Execution and Involve Stakeholders: Involving top executives and lower organizational layers in the decision process about how to execute change can bring “different perspectives” that contribute to the “cohesiveness of the people involved in the change,” said Mr. Sanchez-Reina.
• Care About the Emotions of Change: “It is critical for CIOs to create a mental track record of as many positives as possible,” said Mr. Sanchez-Reina.

Mollie West Duffy, head of learning and development at Lattice, in an article for Harvard Business Review, said change fatigue is not an individual issue but needs to be addressed at the team or organization level. “First, pause to acknowledge when a significant change is happening, and the discomfort that comes with it. Second, adopt a learning mindset and model for your team that it’s normal to be continuously evolving, especially in the face of ongoing uncertainty. Third, make plans, but accept that you and your team will likely deviate from them. Lastly, invest in simple rituals that the team can do together to reduce stress,” she wrote.